Efficient Crafting
Propositions and simple conclusions *If you think about "crafting" as the combination of buying a bunch of blacksmith upgrades, choosing a gemwaster level, then clicking "Craft a new pickaxe" until you're satisfied, things get complicated quickly since you're dealing with two partially convertible currencies. *Any time you have money, you'll need to choose between blacksmith upgrades and click upgrades. So, you need to use a unified decision process for choosing among all possible upgrades, since they're all bought with gold. *It's only worthwhile to buy an upgrade if you get a benefit from it right away, or will get a benefit from it before you purchase any upgrade that provides immediate benefits. **Conclusion: the only time you should buy blacksmith upgrades is when you are about to craft. If you estimate it's not a good time to craft (or you don't have enough gems to craft), hold off buying blacksmith upgrades (maybe note them down somewhere) **If you don't buy enough blacksmith upgrades (how much is enough?), you've a high chance of a dud. If you want an improved pick you'll have to craft many times, wasting gems, time, and manual click power. So, before you buy a single blacksmith upgrade, you should have a list of exactly what you want to buy . Make sure you've saved up enough money to buy all the blacksmith upgrades you want to buy in one fell swoop. If you don't have that much money, keep saving your pennies (maybe buy click upgrades if the gain in $/second is high enough) *If you don't have any gems, you can't craft. If you have infinite gems you can craft continually. If your gem count is increasing you can afford to spend more gems (upgrade the gemwaster and/or keep crafting even after you get a "sufficiently improved" pick). If you run out of gems, you're spending them faster than you're earning them: you either aren't earning enough, are crafting too much, have the gemwaster set too high, or need to buy gemfinder/blacskmith efficiency upgrades. *If you don't have any gems, you can "buy some" by switching to a lower-level ore, where you get more victories per minute but less gold per minute. The difference in gold is the "cost" of buying gems. **It ought to be possible to come up with an equation or rule of thumb for the optimal level to dip down to. This won't be Poo since higher levels can give you more gold and the same number of gems. It might not even be the highest level you can one-hit-kill, some levels may give more gold and still an acceptable number of gems. Possible crafting strategies and how they perform *Craft once every time you buy a blacksmith upgrade *Craft n times every time you buy n blacksmith upgrades **or maybe different upgrades have different counts? *Hold off on crafting until you are reasonably sure you'll not craft a dud **you can be reasonably sure when blacksmith base power is greater than current pick's P value) *When you craft, keep crafting until you spend x% of your gems **100%? 50% 25% **However many gems you earned since the last time you crafted? **Something related to how likely you are to get a good pick vs a dud? *When you craft, keep crafting until you get a pick with the % quality number the same or more than your old pick **This doesn't perform well as you end up needing more and more crafting attempts to get there, even when you buy upgrades *Always use gemwaster at maximum level **...unless you don't have enough gems? *Any other ideas?